I’m temporarily unable to write a personal blog.  It’s my bad.

Championable.com will be on hiatus until May 26th, after which I will be back to, um, normal.  I won’t be on internet hiatus, though, so I’ll still see you on your part of the internet in the meantime.

Love to all. Even you, the waitress who said “Wait, Run DMC had a person named RUN in it?”

You know how sometimes you feel the urge to look up because you can feel that someone is looking at you? That just happened. And holy SHIT did this lady have the most beautiful eyes. I don’t even think she was looking specifically at ME, but kind of just looking at people on the train, and it was my turn. So this ain’t no ego trip.

Still, it was neat.

Love to all. Even you, the jackass with the Bose Noise Canceling headphones on, and his cell ringer set to “loud.”

I want it to last forever, but it lasts for seconds.

Love to all. Even you.

A client calls, from a division of a big ad agency, says she nees a Java expert to come fix a problem. I say, cool, what’s the problem? She says, it’s our website. I say, Java? Are you sure you don’t mean JavaScript?

She puts me on hold.

She gets back on. Yes. JavaScript. I say: cool. Could you tell me what’s up? She says the page isn’t looking the same in different browsers. I say: cool, how come you know it’s JavaScript?

She puts me on hold.

She comes back. Can I have my technical expert call you, she asks? Cool, I say.

She hangs up.

She calls back with her tech guy on the phone.

I say: Hey, how’s the problem expressing itself that keys you to the fact that it’s JavaScript? He says, I don’t know. I don’t think there’s any JavaScript. I say: cool, so what’s the problem. It doesn’t look right, he says. I don’t know. I ask if he can send me the files.

They hang up as the klaxons in my head continue sounding.

I think, okay. This is a job that is guaranteed to be bigger or different or stranger than it appears. It’s a setup for failure. It’s a client we’ve been trying to land for a while. I think, I’ll do it myself. If it doesn’t work out, we don’t charge them. If it works out, we charge them. Risk nothing, learn something. Why not. I could use the distraction.

They tech guy calls back and tells me to go to a web page.

It’s a small graphic with a black background surrounding. I say, what’s the problem? He says, we want the black eliminated. I say, cool, but if you don’t declare a color, it’ll just use a default. He says no, we want this little picture to fill up the whole page. I say cool, but scaled is going to look really bad, because you rasterized the type as part of the image when it could’ve been rendered by the browser. He says, what? I say, I’m not sure exactly what you want to do with the images I’m seeing. He says, oh, I’ll find out.

He hangs up.

They call me back and now they art director is on the phone. It’s just a page that says under construction, he says, no big deal, I just want the page to know what size the screen is on and fill up the entire screen no matter how big it is. I say, cool, but there are dozens of resolutions across platforms, he says oh, well, tell me how many and I’ll send them to you. I ask for the core files they used to do the page they have up now.

They hang up.

They send the files and they are shockingly inept. This is a 200-person part of a multi-thousand-person firm. Smeary photoshop, obvious typos, bad use of basic technology. Layers which should have remained layers are flattened.

I write to say that maybe they should just do one version with a background that scales to any size monitor. The tech guy writes me back to say okay.

My employee asks to do the job.

As she’s doing it, I clearly, emphatically, and explicitly say, don’t use any overlapping background, because when the browser window changes size, you’re going to see all this moving asphalt underneath a square of completely stationery asphalt. Much of our conversation is about transparency, and why it’s essential for this project.

She has her own ideas. Does it her own way. Doesn’t listen. Hands me a bunch of files with large, rectangular blocks of background copied onto them. They are completely unusable. Uncool, I think.

At five o’clock, she leaves for the day. I start the project over. Call my friend, who helps me with advice and feedback.

A couple of hours later, I’ve asked the client to give me some feedback on the different versions of the same font, the way I’ve had to extend graphics to compensate for the larger backgrounds, etc.

They’ve gone home. I get a text message from the tech guy saying so, and that he is leaving too. Cool, I say, but I was hoping for some feedback since this is due first thing in the am, and I asked for feedback a half-hour before anyone left. He says, well, just send everything and thanks bye!

I leave the office. I get on the train. My friend sends me one more change. I’m going to make it now.

End.

Love to all. Even you, the CEO who likes things shiny.

Instead, I came home to find that Maggie had done the garbage duties, and I took my 11-year-old to see Iron Man.

Rock ON.

This movie had a tremendously talented cast.  I was SO psyched to see Robert Downey, Jr. on screen in a such big, big way. He was the perfect actor for this role, and he did a fantastic job.  And, holy shit… Gwyneth Paltrow and Jeff Bridges backing up Robert Downey?  That ROCKS.

It was a really good movie, probably the best “superhero” film I’ve seen.

I’ll start the carpet tonight.

Love to all.  Even you, the woman in the full-body doily.

I can’t really write about it presently, but it turns out that my understanding of how things were going at my company were seriously flawed.  From an operational and planning perspective, they were flawed at a very basic level. This is a massive ego hit, as I’m someone who really takes pride in being able to read people. Nothing catastrophic happened, and I don’t believe anything is going to.  Although, who knows what the fuck THAT means, since I didn’t see the initial situation coming in the first place.

I’m not going to write about it further until it’s completely resolved, which won’t be for some time.  I just had to put something up here so I can move on to other things. It’s very difficult not to write more, even abstractly.  But knowing when and where to express myself is, I guess, part of growing up.

Love to all.  Even you, the Condi Rice lookalike with the non-stop Samsung.

I didn’t see it coming; I had no clue at all.

I’ll write about it when it’s over.

Love to all. Even you.

I am not kidding: I think this person is near- or actually evil. I think he hates the world because he hates himself. I think he’s closeted, sef-loathing, angry and, in the end, slowly turning to crumbled carbon from the inside out.

I have seen him knock over girl scouts in order to get to his car in the train parking lot.

When he sits near me on the train, I sometimes pretend to get up to leave just to make him leap to his feet to get there first. He does it every time.

I’ve seen him yell at an old man who politely said “excuse me” to get to the next seat.

Sometimes he is on the train with his wife, he always yells at her.

His skin is too taught. His voice is grating.

He bothers me because he represents everything I hate about where I live, and the kind of seething, slow-burn anger that I never want to experience.

I know I’m supposed to pray for him, and I guess I will try.

And look! God just intervened. A family of French tourists just got on this very, very crowded train, and I gave my seat up for the Mom and her daughter (forcing a different guy who piled his stuff on the seat next to him to move it - ha!)

I’m now sitting on the floor in the vestibule, about to change the title of this post before I hit “publish.”

Love to all. Even you, shiny cheeks.

For me, super out = living like everyone else, as moment-to-moment unaware that some people define my life as abnormal as can be.

The New York Times Magazine had a big article on the life of gay couples in Massachusetts. I didn’t get to read the whole thing - life in the suburban fast lane, you know - but the upshot was that married life for gay couples is pretty much the same as life for other couples.

To which I say: duh.

This is why this issues bugs me so much. As my 11-year-old says: “love is love.”

But this isn’t the point of this post at all.

The point of this post is that I’m no longer certain I care about the whole pseudoanonymity thing.  Anyone who wants to figure out who I am can have a pretty easy time of it, and it’s not like I’m hiding anything here. And it’s getting harder and harder to separate these worlds, with the number of Face

So… what of it?  Do you folks have any opinions on blog anonymity?  Is it worth it?  Possible?  Stupid?

Love to all. Even you, the umbrella-as-rocket salesman.

First: I just want to say for the record that it’s the married women that are dangerous. But when it comes to HOW dangerous, I’m going to say “not very.” Lust is a big, bad motherfucker, but you really have to engage it in order for it to be threatening in any way. This is different than being a wee bit flirty. Now, if I was to play “force field” with someone, well, THAT would lead to some serious danger.

Second: PostFix kicked the shit out of me tonight. What email server rejects INCOMING email with a “relaying denied” error? What the FUCK?

Third: My business, after getting on its feet, is about to go through some serious changes. For once, it’s not really my fault. My beloved recruiter is going through a variety of personal issues, and she’s decided to move to… move to… Buffalo.

Now, everyone I know who has BEEN to Buffalo keeps saying, “What the FUCK?” I don’t get it either. Somehow, the fact that it’s 2.5 hours from her family in Toronto is one of the deciding factors.

My recruiter rocks. She’s a great person, fabulous at her job, smart, driven, etc. So, well, we’re going to try acting like we live in 2008, and let her telecommute. Broadband + VOIP = full-time job placement from home. She’s something of a writer/recluse (in a good way), so this appeals to her a lot. It worries me, but she says it’s ideal.

We’re giving it 60 days.

Personally, I think she’s doing things way too quickly and without enough forethought, but it’s not my place to say at this point… I know this because I asked if she wanted my personal or professional opinion… and she said “professional only.” Things were too intense, she said, for her to get any more opinions.

I’m afraid her family isn’t doing right by her, but I respect her request.

Fourth: Nobody really stands up to Maggie’s Dad. God bless the man, but he just doesn’t listen to ANYONE. Don’t get me wrong… he’s a decent guy and I love him, but he just doesn’t take other people into account on an emotional level. In fact, Maggie was reduced to tears at one point simply because he ignores her. I lost it with him once, when he refused not to cut up my youngest’s dinner WHILE I WAS TELLING HIM NOT TO, causing my youngest to cry, causing my Father-in-Law to say “I can’t keep up with your rules,” which, in turn, cause me to say: “NO. There were no rules. You just didn’t LISTEN.”

I said this three times, until I was sure he heard me.

Fifth: I feel like every time I call home, people are too busy to talk to me.

Sixth: I feel like I’m being ignored, when it comes to certain parental decisions about supervising the kids. I vaguely understand this, but I strongly, strongly disagree.

Seventh: My to-do list didn’t get shorter from beginning of the day to the end.

Eighth: My train is about to arrive.

Love to all. Even you, the lady who is clearly redirecting her embarrassment about a financial situation into self-righteousness about a company policy violation.